Give a buyer one price and they decide yes or no. Give them three and they decide which — a much easier question, and one where 'no' quietly drops off the table.
Faced with three options, most people avoid the cheapest (feels like settling) and the dearest (feels like a risk) and land in the middle. So the middle is the one you design to be the answer.
How to build the three
- The anchor — your premium tier. It mostly exists to make the middle look reasonable.
- The target — the middle. This is the one you actually want most people to buy, so it should be the obvious best value.
- The entry — the cheapest. A real yes for the hesitant, and a foot in the door you can upsell later.
Don't fake it
The tiers have to be genuinely different — more of the thing, or a real extra — not the same product at three prices with features removed to punish the cheap option. Buyers can smell a manufactured tier, and it costs you the trust the structure was meant to build.